Reserved for nearly 2 years, Cong Phuong still offers price of nearly 1 million USD

Nguyen Cong Phuong is negotiating with a club to return to Vietnam to play and he has offered a contract fee of up to 24 billion VND for 3 seasons. In fact, Vietnamese football has many contracts with very high prices such as Quang Hai, Hoang Duc, Tuan Hai or Nguyen Filip. This amount is not too unreasonable if Cong Phuong often plays abroad.

However, the player from Nghe An rarely played in the 2 seasons in Japan. Therefore, the first division team was somewhat surprised and made an offer lower than what Cong Phuong wanted. The final decision will belong to the player born in 1995 and his family.

This season, Yokohama FC was relegated to J.League 2 but Cong Phuong was still rarely selected. Cong Phuong only had one start for Yokohama FC in 20 months. In May, Cong Phuong played 17 minutes in Yokohama FC's 1-3 loss to Nagoya Grampus in the Japanese National Cup. Last season, he played less than 2 minutes.

In the most recent training session of the Vietnam national team, Nguyen Cong Phuong was left out by coach Kim Sang-sik even though he really needed more strikers for his attack. The coaching staff of the Vietnam national team did not have any data on Cong Phuong because he only played for the Yokohama FC reserve team in practice matches. Coach Kim Sang-sik did not call up the player and the chance of him playing at the club level was almost zero.

The last time he joined the national team was in December 2023 to prepare for the Asian Cup. However, Cong Phuong was injured and did not recover in time. Coach Philippe Troussier had to drop his student right before the Vietnamese team left for the tournament.

After that, Cong Phuong was not called up again. The move to return home to compete was considered a decision to save Nguyen Cong Phuong's career. After many trips abroad, Cong Phuong has not been able to fulfill his dream of shining outside of Vietnam.